Last week I drove out to Rankin County to get my nails done. I don't normally spend a lot of time in Rankin County and only went this time because I had a gift certificate for a pedicure. I guess this means it takes at least $40 in pocket for me to enter Rankin County. I don't want people from out there to get horribly offended, but I generally don't like places that don't sell liquor. I think its very anti-Catholic of them. I promise you that just because of the lack of liquor, the Catholic population of Rankin County isn't large.
I decided to take a friend to jabber with during the 45-minute ride out to that lovely piece of suburban dreamland. My friend and I made several stops at different stores picking up a few things before we went for our pedicures. We eventually found the strip mall housing the place, parked, and then walked inside at just the right time as to garner immediate and solicitous service. This was great as I like immediate and solicitous attention in most situations. The pedicures that followed were so lovely that we decided manicures were in order. But 10 minutes into these manicures, things started getting unpleasant.
It was about this time that I heard the nail tech servicing the woman seated in between my friend and me ask her customer if she "liked Sarah Palin." Now, contrary to what one might believe, I usually keep my mouth shut when people state their political beliefsespecially if they are diametrically opposed to my own. I'm very practiced at keeping quiet due to my sweet Delta family and their conservative viewpoints. So, it normally would have been very easy for me to keep my mouth shut as she said: "Oh, I just looooove her. She's so gorgeous. And, that Cindy McCain is just beautiful!"
After she said this, she looked my direction. I assumed she wanted my nod of approval and appropriate coo concerning Cindy's hair and Palin's MILF hotness. I am ashamed to say that my self-restraint buckled under the woman's gaze, and I very innocently exclaimed: "Yes! She is beautiful. She's had a lot of good work done on her face."
I could see the woman trying to figure out my intentions when the nail tech helping my friend decided to ask my friend if she is a Republican.
Now, I may not have many manners. But, I do feel as if nail and hair salons should follow the same rules of the dinner table. No politics, religion or money talk at the manicure table. My friend appropriately replies to the tech that she believes that is a "personal decision," but that she is a Democrat. The nail tech polishing the woman's nails immediately throws my friend a dirty look and screams, "So, you are pro-choice?"
It's right about here that I begin to truly understand how people like Sarah Palin get the majority of Mississippians to vote against their best interests every four years. They go straight from being a Democrat to baby-killing. That's it. There is no understanding of the subtleties of politics and people holding different beliefs about policy, and there is obviously no understanding of tax code and the average income of Mississippi families compared to the rest of the country. Dems are baby-killers and liberal pansies who all want to be Communists.
Not one week later, as the Republicans are losing ground in the polls, the lead story on CNN is titled "Palin Ups Rhetoric on Abortion," which supports my theory. I think this story signifies everything I dislike about Sarah Palin. It is extremely difficult for a woman like mewho understands that Roe v. Wade isn't about baby-killing but is about women's rightsto understand another woman who is opposed to these rights.
Palin consistently fights against the rights won by the very same feminist movement that allowed her the ability to reach her current political position. Does she know this? Can someone tell her? And, while we are at it, can they also tell her that if we want a culture that "respects life," she is going to have to change her beliefs about the death penalty? I'm not quite sure she's gotten that memo, either.
What makes me even angrier about the exchange at the nail salonother than the fact that the tech doing my friend's nails refused to finish them after her announcement of being a Democratwas the woman sitting next to me had no idea of Palin's beliefs and what they could do to the women's movement in general. The women's movement didn't win us the right to be "hot." This movement garnered each of us the right to vote, and work, and decide to choose what to do with our bodies. This is the same movement that allows me to sit at a nail salon on a Saturday speaking freely about how I would cast my vote. It is also the movement that gave her the ability to divorce her husband whom she proclaimed "worked in energy" and take half his sh*t. Ain't feminism grand?
Now, I know that most women in Mississippi are smarter than this. I write this column simply to call on them to understand that Palinwho has absolutely no substance to her platform other than beliefs that divide and suppress womendoesn't deserve to hold the office of vice president. She doesn't deserve to benefit from the feminist movement she denigrates. She doesn't deserve our vote, and she doesn't deserve any more "rock star" attention during this election.
In short, she simply doesn't deserve us.
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